Various products such as over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, or other medications, have conventionally been offered in single-dose blister cards for providing a consumer individual doses of the product. The blister cards generally comprise a thin sheet of transparent material defining a plurality of blisters. A removable foil backing is typically adhered to the transparent material for sealing each blister individually. Each blister contains a single dose such as one or two tablets of the subject medication, e.g., cold medicine. Some manufacturers of the blister cards include perforated seams between the individual blisters, thereby enabling a consumer to remove one or more blisters from the blister card for transporting or discarding, for example. Immediately prior to ingestion, the consumer needs only to apply a force to the blister and push the medicine through the foil backing.
Such conventional single-dose blister cards are also utilized by pharmacists for prescription medications. Additionally, in recent years, pharmacists have begun utilizing multi-dose blister cards. Multi-dose blister cards are constructed generally identical to single-dose blister cards, although slightly larger in some cases. For example, multi-dose blister cards include individual blisters sized and configured to accommodate multiple tablets, and more particularly, multiple doses of different medications. Such multi-dose blister cards can help reduce confusion among patients having to ingest multiple prescriptions, for example, on any given day.
One typical multi-dose blister card may include, for example, an individual blister for each day of the week, where each blister contains the prescribed medication for that day. Accordingly, the blisters for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday may contain, for example, two drug tablets, while the blisters for Tuesday and Thursday may contain three drug tablets. Accordingly, the patient must only identify the day of the week (and possibly the time of day) to ensure that all prescribed medications are properly ingested.
As mentioned, conventional multi-dose blister cards are larger than conventional single-dose blister cards because the blisters must be sized to accommodate multiple tablets, pills, or other drug delivery devices. The larger blister cards can therefore become bulky, cumbersome, and difficult to store on one's person such as in a purse, briefcase, or a coat pocket, for example.